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kollelman:– he can’t even reverse any executive orders
indeed. I wonder whether the Supremes will use it as a precedent for the next administration.
huju: rise in tuition substantially
I think one short-term answer for our community is online colleges or online programs in regular colleges. Their tuition is generally 50% off regular price, making even out-of-state state colleges reasonably affordable. With current financial squeeze, they should be happy to accept “full” (full online, i.e. 50%) tuition students.
In terms of quality, some explicitly offer same professors and diplomas as their offline departments.
Socially, this is probably even safer than over-priced “kosher” colleges w/ dorms. Maybe it is possible to have several friends to apply to the same program and study together.common: @does that apply to the Rebbes and Teachers
changing gears somewhat: It seems that Congress will not pass blanket protection to businesses, then you might be able to sue your Rebbes in secular courts if the following happened (not saying it happened to everyone, but all happened somewhere):
1) they were not careful enough (for example, going to unmasked minyanim), or were not promptly reporting cases to parents,
2) you discovered how bad teaching is when seeing teacher on zoom
3) that your child learned better and got better midos out of school
4) your child was able to learn at home without medication that school insisted on
5) your school always insisted that their school is better than online schools, then continued charging full tuition for online/phone classes
According to pre-election “leaks”, Joe Biden is not always as stubborn and stupid as he sounds.
The guy recalled that when Senator Biden suggested forced partition of Iraq, the author wrote an article explaining why the idea is wrong. Next day, he got a call from Biden’s staffer, who said: we sent you a letter condemning your article, you should get it tomorrow and we will publicize it. Please disregard it, we need to do it for PR, the senator got your message.
So, hopefully, this insincerity applies to other items he talked about. Even better – he honestly said many times that he would rather not say anything than lie to the voters, and would lie only when he
was forced to say something.Nice, eh?
Syag >> No charlie, you are wrong. You follow your rabbis on halachic matters
First, there seems to be a room for being more careful personally. Namely, we feed a patient on Yom Kippur when either a doctor OR a patient say so. Is there an acharon that says a Rav should review their opinion?
2nd, there is a diversity of halakhic opinions here. I was very impressed by R Meir Twersky’s psak early on. I quoted him here before and do not remember any response. One thing he said sounded true: we generally recommend listening to your respected doctor, but due to high uncertainty of the new virus, we should listen to worst fears of several opinions. At the same time, discussing the plans with one of a pretty reasonable local Rabbis, his initial position was “Let’s trust this doctor X”.
Another early warning came from R Heineman: when asked whether it is OK for several families to stay nearby to form a minyan outside, he answered – if you do that at the time when this is forbidden, it will lead to some Jews being denied ventilators by someone saying – they caused it to themselves.
So, when asking for an opinion, you may want to make sure you ask someone who heard enough factual information and has enough historical depth. If you are not sure, provide that information to him.
would this work?
Trump runs for Congress in 2022 (from Florida?)
becomes Speaker of the House
impeach/convict big guy and VP at the same time
Trump is President by June 2023Reported Phase 3 trials were over-conservative in their design. Their primary goal was to fly through FDA rigid acceptance rules. The risk of failure was – months to do another trial.
They passed it. Note the French fiasco. I understand that they did not achieve sufficient efficacy and now going into another Phase 3 (= several months).All indications are that it will be soon (1-2 months?) clear what is effect of vaccine on transmission – by analyzing current data, updating trials, observing vaccinated population.
Another guess: possibly, recommended dose is too high (to guarantee passing the test). mRNA teams could do that because there is no risk of getting COVID. Traditional vaccines have to more careful. So, if the doses will be lowered, there will be more of them and less side effects.
A note for those taking it soon: today’s FDA panel discussed that taking more time between two doses gives more final protection, but it is hard to recommend more time as this increases time when a person is protected less by just one dose. So, if you are not an exposed medical worker, but a relatively isolated alter – you may want to ask your doctor about spacing doses a little longer.
crackers: none of us has had covid in weeks, yes their was a spike
Covid propagation seem to be highly clustered. That is, it circulates in one closely-knit community, and community across the river is safe. Then, one person drives over the bridge for a party, and in a week, second community is affected. A lot of early patterns about what works and not was disproven because of that. If you compare countries/states/cities over multiple months, they belong to a smaller number of patterns then over a week.
So, if you are/were in a safe cluster, you can protect the cluster by:
1) isolating from other communities: if someone visited other communities, they should not go to shul or send kids to school for 2 weeks/getting neg test. This seems an easy solution, but community leaders should insist on that. Our community had several cases recently, all related to this issue.2) SD and masks all the time so that if a case comes in, propagation slows in the 1-2 weeks before the cases show up. This seems to be hard as witnessed on this board due to a combination of love for freedom, political views, lack of education, community leadership, and sheer stubbornness
3) warning system – when someone has symptoms, he should immediately let all his shul/school/community contacts know, before he gets test results after 3 days
ujm: current position is no.
Most of propagation is going through young population, thus it will continue for some time, while, hopefully number of difficult cases will be gradually reducing. Presumably, with lower deaths, youngsters will be even less careful, and thus, move to herd faster.
Re: transition. Recent studies compare locations with and without colleges and see that half of deaths are attributed to presence of colleges by eventually propagating thru the rest of community.
Most direct route – medical students that were, in the studied example, 25% of nursing home staff.RE: out of their control and currently they are unable to pay, …will become a skilled worker able to pay taxes.
This forgiveness plan covers much more people – most of them were in control of their actions and, apparently, did not become skilled workers. This, as already ongoing forgiveness for working in desirable positions, such as government, is de-factor re-distribution of wealth from working people to university administrators and non-profit/government sector workers
As to “stimulus” effect – this is stimulating the wrong people, who will now advise their children to go get a “free” degree in “gender studies”.
One reasonable solution is to tie degree-producers to the loans, either as co-signers on the loans (defaulting loans are paid by college, not taxpayers), or by using direct contracts lehathila – you will pay for college in the future as a percentage of your working salary. The latter contracts exist in a couple of places already.
DY >> Your loss if you don’t support talmidei chachomim
a basic question: how do we determine who is a Talmid Chacham. Like Rabbi Yannai?
@yaakov. My kids are not government employees..
I am not “generous”, I am just writing expenses off 🙂
on a serious note:
1) Timing of tips – new year sounds better than a week before. This year, we did a couple of tips near Thanksgiving. Not sure if they expect another one2) for those who can, consider increasing ordering more deliveries from contractors, such as instacart, and tip them. These are often people who had jobs that suffered in pandemic. So, both tips and delivery cost would count as tzedokah, I think.
Sefer Maccabees reports following tweets on the 8th day of Chanuka:
– how do we know it was real oil and not an illusion, so it does not count
– so many people came to see it, I could not see anything anyway!
– and what are we going to do tomorrow? why didn’t you generate more miracle oil!?
– tzedukim would do the same, and they would not aggravate the yavanim by their “Jews first” racismHave some appreciation for those who worked hard for whole year to get some help to billions of people, even if not everything is known 100%
This is not a healthy attitude “government made me borrow” beyond my means.
To remind you, Obama cancelled private loan programs in 2010 and made gov the only lender. This generated “savings” of 70 Bln that year that were redirected elsewhere – as “guaranteed” loans have no “cost”. There are already forgiveness ways – if you work for a “non profit”, teach, or, gasp, work for the government.
Hard to tell Biden’s health. Unfortunately, voters were not given a lot of chances to evaluate his thinking or, more importantly, his positions. Best chance when he offered a contest with a “fatty” in Iowa, but there was no follow-up.
Presumably, he has a lot of “reasonable” positions, but this is guesses, as he mostly refused to answer any questions that will divide his coalitions of centrists, neverTrumpers and extremists of different flavors. The fact that society in large part went along with such uncontested election is a sad phenomenon.
DY >> Nowadays, it is very rare for someone to be able to learn without taking a stipend of some sort
This is known as “true Scotsman fallacy” (true Scotsman does X. What about someone who does not do X? He is not a true Scotsman). How about Israelis in Hesder yeshivot? People who come to learn before and after work. Everyone on this board who disagree with you?
there are lots of other questions, here are some:
how do you know you are “not able to work and learn”. Did you try?do you make any extra efforts to avoid pitfalls mentioned by SA? Robbery? Hillul Hashem? Dishonoring Torah? (Borrowing R Avigdor Miller’s analogy: if you go into fire to save a child, you will still get burns).
If you have to receive tzedokah, you have to be careful how you spend it. Do you buy extras that are not needed for your learning? Did you buy a $100 esrog? if you have a computer and an hour to spend on this board, maybe you could find an hour to work and reduce amount of tzedoka that you receive?
What is the source of your “stipend”? consider large amounts of government subsidies that non-working Jews take directly or indirectly. This is different from having a Jewish community supporting Torah. Is there a source for that?
I tried to tip my cooking stuff, waiters, cleaning service, landscaper, butler, dog walker, hairdresser, delivery service, repair-person, laundromat. My wife refused the tips, but the kids took some.
Gadol: Pfizer has definitely had “issues”
This is a typical business case: many (smaller) companies accept government funding for R&D, giving government certain rights in return. Larger companies prefer keeping their IP by paying for R&D and then (gladly) accept government funds for “testing”, “integration” and other activities that presume that product already exists. They do get often paid more than those companies that share IP with the government, but they often leverage their size and relationship with government personnel, who might be interested in joining a board in the future (see your example).
In this case, Pfizer accepted early pre-orders. You can easily get confused by news dis-information. Today, NYT reported the role of US gov – when they switched from dissing Trump for not getting enough vaccines to complaining that developing countries will not have enough vaccines because …. US and other rich countries order too much. Specifically they say – EU ordered 2x over their population; US ordered 4x. US is getting priority shipment because it was
(1) first to pre-pay all major vaccines. EU, etc followed this idea after
(2) paying for R&D for several companies. Canada has a parliamentary inquiry why they paid early for Moderna, but are getting it after US. Answer: clause in funded R&D or/and US executive orderas to your other point, I am not clear why Pfizer did not report preliminary reports before election. Original plan was to wait, I think, for 32 infected, and then, it was switched to 64 and “by the time they looked”, there were 90+. Report that I read was deliberately vague who increased the number, but it sounds more like FDA. Possible that Pfizer was happy to go along as reporting with less results increased risk of getting bad numbers, even if they did not have political motivation.
DY >> it’s muttar and therefore proper.
Here is SY YD 246:21 REMA, Sefaria translation:
first, the benefits of working and learning, tell me you are not envious:
A person should not think to engage in Torah and to acquire wealth or honor with the learning, for one who ventures to think such a thought will not achieve the crown of Torah… make his Torah fixed and his work contingent, and should reduce business and engage in Torah…work all day for his livelihood if he does not have enough to eat, and the rest of the day and the night he should engage in Torah. ..great quality to generate one’s sustenance from the work of his hands …2) scary threats, are you not afraid?
Anyone who puts in his mind occupying himself with Torah and not working, but supporting himself from tz’dakah, behold, this one desecrates the Divine name and dishonors the Torah. .. it attracts sin and he winds up robbing people.3) now what is mutar, tell me which category you belong to below – old, sick, Rav of the city, very poor talmid haham, get [direct?] donations from sponsors, unable to provide for yourself and learn at the same time (according to most lenient of lenient opinions – use this one if you always follow lenient oipinions, of course)
an elder or a sick person [AAQ – better to be paid for Torah than get Medicaid]
some say that it is permitted even for a healthy person…
Rav of the city has an income and provisions
sage who needs it, but for a wealthy person it is prohibited.
some are more lenient, saying that it is permitted for a sage and his students to accept subsidies from those who donate ..
Nevertheless, one who is able to provide for himself well from the work of his own hands and to engage in Torah, it is a pious quality and a gift of God, but this is not the nature of all persons, for it is impossible for everyone to engage in Torah and to become wise in it and to provide for himself by himself.Reb Eliezer: according to you what is the psak?
while I am also curious, I have to admit this is an unfair question. Actual psak could – and should – be different for different people.
I recall being in a class by a University Rav, who mentioned that he gets asked every year whether it is “mutar” to take a class “Comparative Religions”, that goes thru all kinds of avodah zarah.
Students: “nu, what’s the halakhah?”
Rav: “what do you mean? there is no one halakhah, depends who is asking. For some people who can get affected by all these images, it is asur; for others, who might go into academia and need to know how to talk to people artound them, it is mutar.
Students: <stunned by the idea that halakhah is different for different people – after memorizing so much “certain halakhah” in yeshiva high schools>GH: >>escape the real world >> filling in as surrogate teachers
I feel opposite on both issues:
– an opportunity to connect to fellow Jews and hear different opinions
– an opportunity to fulfill mitzva “ve shinantem levaneha” on your own instead of using some randoms as substitute parents. While the process is not without challenges and negative parts, we enjoy discussing interesting things with kids instead of reacting to what schools do to them. YMMV.Encouragement for grandparents here: says somewhere that someone who teaches a grandchild gets olam haboh. Explanation – parent can teach a kid merely by example. Grandparent can not, the kid can not relate to his example that is too far removed. So, a grandparent is force to teach in a way that generalizes from his generation to the kid’s, and that merits olam haboh.
DaasYochid,
seems like Rambam has a majority support here, but I am curious to understand the strength of your references – is your position based on your own analysis of the sources you have quoted or you learned from a Rav? If the latter, maybe you can ask him to clarify the issues that were raised here>> with no issues despite what the manufacturer says.
“famous last words”
Why do you disregard expert opinion to satisfy your inner desire to be mahmir?
I think most of latest gerrymandering is Republican due to them winning a lot of local elections lately. Each party takes advantage of the rules when they can. It may be becoming worse lately as politicians have full demographic and predictive analytics on voters, and we, the voters, are at the losing end all the time.
re: extra day. Besides d’rabanan, we got tradition of doing 2 days after Samaritans interrupted fire signals towards Bavel by creating false fires. By Hanuka, Samaritans were, as Jews, affected by Hellenism, then were defeated by Hashmonaim, so had probably less time to play with fire. Also, they might not have cared about Chanukah that was not their holiday.
Also, you have 25 days to reach Bavel, more than usual 14.
as a general solution: how about reading instructions or inquiring with the manufacturer – do they allow putting the object in the water? would this void the warranty?
you may feel that this looks safe, but manufacturer will know better. Look at recurring incidents with shabbos fires – people can underestimate the risks.
This seems like a Jewish version of internet flames between working mothers and homemakers (Now, settled by Corona to a draw as WFH…).
Looking at bigger picture, it seems that most people are supposed to work – make your shabbos like hol but not get tzedoka; many tried to be like Shimon Bar Yochai and failed; teach your son Torah, profession so that he does not become a thief; Rambam quoted above. Although Rambam himself seems to prefer learning, including science from Muslims, until the death of his brother.
So, obviously, B- full time learning at someone else expense is an innovation, cause by destruction of Jewish communities at modern times. Simply speaking, at times when anti-semitism protected the community, one could be an ignoramus or an apikoires, and still have Jewish kids. So, emergency measures were used and probably were the right ones.
In one reported conversation right after WW2, Hazon Ish quotes to the visiting Satmar Rov the Rambam that his yeshiva system is the desert where you are supposed to go when there is no other place to live. [ad kan Hazon Ish]. Obviously, we are closing on 80 years ” in the desert” – twice more than Moshe Rabeinu – and we now experience negative effects. To such degree, that people have to apologize for working.
At some point, this self-preservation is becoming self-defeating – we are not preserving live Judaism, but some unauthentic dead copy.
I think three is a vicious circle of people who learn without getting a profession, then go into teaching without having an inspiration for that, then teaching new generation while trying to start a business on a side.
to have the humriest grill that all YWNers would be able to emjoy –
cut the cord and scratch the paint off before toivelingLike a page of Gemorah that starts with Hametz and ends up with Terumah!
MODERATOR!!common: is it because with the advent of social media we are more connected?
possibly. this highlights the problem. If many people get “connected” via social media and against the positions of the leaders, they might be getting the worst parts of the connectedness, but not the best. Thus, propagation of social media without ability to properly research information. Maybe YWN should reconsider hyperlink policy by allowing links to, say, academic or government papers.
Maybe the receptionist followed this halakha:
Greater than being called ‘Rabban’ is to be called by one’s own namecurious – when someone considers/advises to “go learn Torah” – how do you measure it?
“go eat” can be measured in calories, “go study math” – in SAT, but how do we measure “‘learn Torah”?
I realize that there is a subjective and a mysterious element here, but we should be able to have some measure, even if imperfect.
@1: Just guessing, maybe you need to view/present yourself more as a person you are than a list of statistics. Why would you take a name that is “just a number”
Re: perfect. Don’t worry – all of married guys are already told on regular basis that we are not perfect! You will also soon!
CTLawyer You are jumping to conclusions
My sincere apologies. But if you borrow liberally (sic!) from the President you dislike, you got to see it coming 🙂 In all seriousness, it is good that we all acknowledge the positive sides of the people we disagree with. It is a basic premise of Jewish communications. Boring to see here people parroting news shows.
As R Sacks ZT”L pointed, we are deluded if we think we can fulfill our obligation to the world by selecting and relying a politician based on “debate between conservatives who claim past that never existed and progressives who promise future that will never exist”.
Reb E: there were Jews who supported him in the beginning being afraid of communism
I agree that polarization blew up Germany – afraid of Nazis? vote communists. afraid of commies? vote national socialists … as the center weakened, both outcomes were bad. If communists wereto come to power, the world might have ended even in a worse place than in WW2 – first Stalin would bring army (through Poland) to support democratic republic of Germany, then Eastern Europe will be surrounded and absorbed, etc. There would not be any NATO in Europe to stand against that. Jews would not had it better also…
@catch, you are right. Seems like our esteemed attorney indeed re-purposed Trump’s joke, whether intentionally or not. Give that CTLawyer always dislikes anything President says, this may be an interesting admission … This illustrates ow often we make judgement based on our prior opinions rather tan facts.
CTLawyer, while this is funny, you are – pardon me – wrong here.
Previous administration was much more polite – they apologized for all the bad stuff America did to the world. They did not even ask anyone for pardon, they mostly excused themselves. As Mr Biden said recently: they could not do prison reform because – o, horror – there were Republicans in the Senate (by the time they got to it, as they could not do two things at the same time). And nothing can be done with Assad or ISIS because … and we pivot to China but they ignore us … and we could help Ukrainians but Russians …
It looks like the biggest lesson from this administration is that things can be done. For example, reports of possible Biden’s China policy – continue Trump’s policy but in a nicer way.
@common?!
I am not sure why I deserve such a great comparison, even as a negative. Thank you anyway.Back to the subject – I am not sure Novominsker Rebbe would agree with that.
Let me quote, for example, what he said in 1995 re:murderer of Yitzhak Rabin: “To New York Times, Chilonim…. we are lumped together… The black plague is here again [sic AAQ]. Rather than projecting the noble character of a Torah Jew, the hotheads have succeeded in besmirching his image”. Look up Jewish Observer, Dec 1995 for his full speech.
In that case, he was concerned with how other group of religious Jews affects yeshiva community.
You think he would take it better when yeshiva community behaves questionably?
I don’t think so.@common – I was thinking someone could react this way (and agree with the moderator :).
I don’t know though how to express the sentiment in a nicer way.There is this subtle disconnect between grim notices on YW front page and attitude of half of the CR that masks are violating are civil rights to breath. I wonder whether you connect those or not.
I propose a penalty term: if a member of Moetzes passed away from Covid in a community that is not careful, then the next member can not be elected from the same community until they do teshuvah.
Somehow, all weather-concerned initiatives are benefiting bad actors and hurting good actors – limit US oil and price of Russian/Arab oil went up; now US gas is bad, let Europe again get gas from Russia; carbon emission payments going to China. Even weather-friendly nuclear energy is bad.
Please come up with “America first”, or say “Democracies first” climate policy.
For example, boycott Iranian oil; stop burning Russian gas; let China pay for their coal pollution.
6 new rabbonim? is this an election year?!
@theprophet,
on the physics of that: virus travels in the air attached to larger particles. Thus, it is stopped, at least in part, by masks and HVAC filters.as to muzzles: Jews pioneered that. See machloket between Lot and Avraham – about _muzzles_ that are protecting _others_ from indirect damage
biased insiders reported the following right before election:
– Biden advocated vetoing anti-Israeli resolution, others, such as Susan Rice, advocated for voting FOR. Obama split the difference and at the last moment instructed to abstain.
– Israeli leaders appreciated Biden’s attitude towards Israel security needs and were able to talk to him. Others on the team did not remember Israeli history and already had Palestinian issue in mind, and were impossible to deal with.This is, of course, self-serving justifications, but probably based on some truth
>> huge shift to the GOP for other candidates
I don’t think there was much of a shift. If you saw exit polls showing otherwise, let me know.
Both sides brought people who did not vote last time.Maybe the switch, or abstained, voters are those that are the difference between other GOP candidates and Trump, and they made a big difference. Some argue that Trump’s policies and achievements without his personality would have more votes, but it is not clear whether many voters would show up without his personality. Mitt had a pleasant personality but it did not get him enough votes.
>> who are all these millions of people who voted Biden
Both candidates attracted record number of voters. As was Trump wish, he achieved multiple records: people who voted for him, people who voted against him;
biggest market jump when elected; biggest market jump when market thinks he was defeated ….it is possible that part of the voting increase is due to Covid – mail voting, people working at home and reading news all the time. Still, it seems enthusiasm on both sides was very high.
going forward, there is a difference though:
Trump energized several clusters of voters using specific ideas – list of Justice, building a wall, Israeli embassy, low regulations, etc.Dems energized their voters by making them hate Trump and keeping themselves out of the news. That is why Biden would not answer any questions about his policies, as any answer he did give alienated someone even as he tried not to [no fracking, but only on federal lands].
So, Dems will have hard time going forward trying to make everyone happy.That is why the main call is to “unite” without specific policy references.
I think I already mentioned – scary demonstrations decease virus spread in a city, as most people (the ones you do NOT see on TV) stay home or avoid crowded places.
What is concerning – that Mr. Biden started forgetting and messing up his mask starting from his first speech after election. Then, he had extended families hugging on stage at such close contact that masks are not of help. Even if they are all pre-tested, this was even riskier than Trump’s WH meetings.
>> dearth of frum, solid boys who are serious about earning an income and supporting a family. By solid, I mean someone who makes daily time to learn and davens with a minyan.
So, you seem to describe an educational crisis rather than a shiduch crisis. Do you see a pattern, where these “solid boys” exist or not exist – specific communities, schools?
We also have sources for being better in tzedokah – being at home, and giving food rather than money.
There is no contradiction – women are more tuned aware of spending, so they are thinking over these allocation decisions with more precision. I think this is true in our days also.On a related note, Eruvin – a home owner is presumed to be out for the night if he is staying with his daughter [but not with his son, as an argument with the daughter-in-law may cause him to come back home to sleep]
>> Maybe all girls should be encouraged to go to Shana Bet
There were comments here,when Covid started, that this could be a good excuse to skip seminaries. For those who do not need seminary for their future jobs, why can’t the girls skip Shana Alef and get professional education? You can do online or local college BS in 3 years. What is the the effect on shiduchim?